Avenged Sevenfold plan a break

M Shadows says that new drummer Arin Ilejay is ‘their guy’ but time out in the recording and touring cycle is essential to avoid burn out

Reported by Eric MacKinnon

Published: August 27, 2011. © Rock AAA.

A7X: Time out essential

Avenged Sevenfold singer M Shadows has revealed the band are plotting a well-earned breather after their wrap up their touring cycle for current album ‘Nightmare’ and he says the length of break and whether they will do any writing in that time is up in the air.
In a chat with Billboard.com the frontman also praised the impact of recent recruit Arin Ilejay on drums and insisted the 23-year-old, who follows on from Dream Theater’s Mike Portnoy who took over after the tragic passing of original drummer Jimmy ‘The Rev’ Sullivan, is ‘their guy.’ Shadows said:
“Ilejay is great. He’s 23 now, and the first show he played was in front of 16,000 people, and from there we went to Rock Am Ring, 80 or 90,000 people in Germany. As far as personality and his playing, he’s our guy, but we haven’t been able to write a record with him yet.
“So we want to make sure for his good and for our good that he can write with us and bring something to the creative and be comfortable in the situation. We’re just trying to work towards that, and hopefully everything works out ’cause we love the guy.”
Speaking on the band’s tradition of taking time out between record’s Shadows points to the recent rumours of a split with metal heavyweights Disturbed as evidence their method works.
He added: “We’ve always taken a long time (between albums), and everyone’s told us we’re stupid for doing that.
“But I think bands burn themselves out. Look what happened to Disturbed; those are good friends of ours, and you just get caught up in the do a record, tour for two years, do a record, tour for two years…We’re very cautious of making sure that everybody has their time. We need to go home…and make sure everybody’s mentally in the right spot to do a new record.
“We all hang out with each other. Me and (guitarist Synyster) Gates are married to twin sisters and they’re best friends, so it’s a total family thing we have going on. And I have a studio in my house.
“So does (Gates). So we’ll hang out and lay some stuff down and joke around with it, and eventually it turns into something for the band — which is a much healthier way to do it instead of putting a lot of stress on ourselves to meet a deadline or something.”